Crete, Greece. Sir Arthur Evans discovers a clay tablet with inscriptions in Linear A and Linear B. Then, in the following days, he discovers hundreds of others. It is later discovered that these tablets had been dried in the sun, not fired, and were therefore baked by the extreme heat of the fire at the Palace of Knossos, which preserved them intact for decades. Even the scribes’ fingerprints can be discerned. The oldest date back to 2000 BC and the most recent to 1375 BC. But it was not until June 1, 1952, that the full meaning of the writing was deciphered, when Michael Ventris published Work Note 20, a turning point in the long quest to understand Linear B. Ventris noticed that certain sequences of symbols appeared frequently, and hypothesized that they were the names of important cities such as Amnisos, Knossos, and Tulissos. He thus identified eight signs. It was a huge step forward. Other words similar to Ancient Greek will then be understood, thanks also to the contribution of John Chadwick. Finally, it will be understood that around 1450 BC, the Mycenaeans conquered the Minoans, imposing their language, thus transforming Linear A, which was an independent language, into Linear B, which was instead heavily influenced by Ancient Greek. Then, on June 24, 1953, Ventris gave a public lecture on the subject, and the following day the decoding of Linear B was published in the Times, alongside the article on the conquest of Everest. Ventris would die in tragic circumstances, in a car accident on September 6, 1956.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Crete, Greece. Sir Arthur Evans discovers a clay tablet with inscriptions in Linear A and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-622123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ev-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n